As we previously reported, OPEC+ made the decision to cut two million barrels of oil a day in production, despite the White House’s pleas to produce more. That caused the White House to “spasm” and panic. But now, there’s more about the White House reaction that is very troubling.
According to the Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the talks,” when the Biden Administration found out that cuts might be coming, they reached out to Saudi Arabia and urged them to pressure OPEC+ to delay the cuts for another month until November, just a few days before the midterm elections so it wouldn’t impact them. That way, Americans wouldn’t feel the effect of the cuts until after the election. It was a full-court press: White House officials called the Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman, and even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke to the finance minister.
The Biden team has done a lot of things to try to deceive us, but it’s hard to get much more nakedly political than that.
According to the report, the Biden team even threatened the Saudis, saying if they didn’t get a delay from OPEC+, they would view it as that they were siding with Russia and it would damage the relationship we have with them.
The Saudis told the Biden team “no,” because they said the Biden team was trying to influence the election; it wasn’t about the oil situation. Then they went and leaned on OPEC+ to cut production. The Saudis also said they have to look out for their economy, if the price per barrel goes too low.
Adrienne Watson of the National Security Council now denies that they wanted a delay for political reasons, “It’s categorically false to connect this to U.S. elections,” Ms. Watson said. “It’s about the impact of this shortsighted decision to the global economy.”
But you can see the Biden team and the Democrats then followed through on the threat that the Biden team allegedly made, about reevaluating the relationship with the Saudis. We saw the White House coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council John Kirby saying this. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) both were also pushing to reevaluate the relationship and put anything with Saudi Arabia on hold.
The WSJ report also showed how much Biden has hurt the relationship with the Saudis. He ostensibly went to Saudi Arabia in July to help repair the relationship and beg for oil, after he had called the country a “pariah” because of the murder of Jamal Kashoggi. But instead of improving things, according to the Saudis, he made things worse.
If anything, said the people inside the Saudi government, the visit angered Prince Mohammed, who was upset that Mr. Biden went public with his private comments to the Saudi royal over Mr. Khashoggi’s death, which prompted Saudi officials to publicly contradict Mr. Biden’s characterization of their interaction. [….]
In August, the Saudis had planned to push OPEC+ to raise oil production by 500,000 barrels a day in an effort to please Mr. Biden, but Prince Mohammed ordered the increase lowered to a token 100,000 barrels a day after the Biden visit, the people inside the Saudi government said.
The U.S. State Department’s energy-security envoy, Amos Hochstein, sent the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, an email that suggested he had broken his word promising a larger increase, people familiar with the matter said.
The email angered Prince Abdulaziz and strengthened his resolve to forge an oil policy independent of the U.S., the people said.
In September, Prince Abdulaziz engineered OPEC+’s first production cut since the pandemic, erasing the 100,000 barrels a day increase from August. Then, before the Oct. 5 OPEC+ meeting, Prince Abdulaziz called Persian Gulf oil chiefs and urged them to back a bigger cut, OPEC+ delegates said.
So, the Saudis started getting unhappy with Biden because of his calling them a pariah, and his wanting to make a deal with Iran, their enemy-and then he made it even worse. On top of that, the Biden team wanted to use the Saudis to deceive us; the Saudis wouldn’t play.
It’s completely believable that they were concerned about their interests, that it wasn’t about siding with Russia. But now, the Biden team is doing everything to push them away and jeopardize our interests in the region, all because they’re mad this might hurt their ability to hold onto power in the elections. What a mess. This is what happens when you have stupid people in charge of the government, who are only interested in their power.
None of this would even be happening, if the Biden team hadn’t jeopardized our domestic oil production.